SERIES: HEALTHY CHURCH!
“THE ACTIVATION FACTOR”
EPHESIANS 4:7-16
OPEN
We finish up our series on church health this morning. First thing this morning, I want us to consider how we know that a human body is dying. One of the indicators is when the individual members of the body begin to shut down. They quit working. There is liver failure. Or kidney failure. Pulmonary failure. Heart failure.
The same is true of the church – the body of Christ. You know a church is dying because its individual members quit working. They look for any reason to quit working. They’ll say, “I’m tired.” Or, “I just don’t have the desire any more.” Sometimes they say, “It’s somebody else’s turn.”
It can be extremely difficult to get a well-established church to moving again. We become like the old farmer who frequently described his Christian experience by saying, “Well, I’m not making much progress, but I’m established!”
One spring when he was hauling some logs, his wagon wheels sank down to the axles in mud. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get the wagon out. Defeated, he sat atop the logs, viewing the dismal situation.
Soon a neighbor who had always felt uncomfortable with the farmer’s worn out testimony came along and greeted him, “Well, brother, I see you’re not making much progress, but you must be content because you’re well-established!”
So, how do we get moving again? The activation factor is every member in ministry. One key issue in church health is that every member of the body needs to be working in some form of ministry.
Somewhere along the line, from the 1st Century to now, we have confused the teaching of Scripture concerning how ministry is to be performed in the local congregation. Somehow, we have developed a “hired gun” mentality. The congregation has become an audience watching the “hired gun” do the work. We look at ministry as something that happens to us and blesses us instead of as a service we perform and that makes us a blessing to others. A congregation that utilizes this method of ministry will become stagnant and die.
The Dead Sea is so mineral rich, especially with salt that it contains no fish or plant life. Why is that? It’s because there are no outlets. A great volume of water pours into this area, but nothing flows out. Many inlets plus no outlets equals a dead sea.
This law of nature may also be applied to the church, and it explains why many congregations are so unfruitful and lacking in spiritual vitality. It’s possible for large numbers of people in a certain church to attend worship regularly, go to conventions and seminars, listen to Christian radio, read Christian books, study the Scriptures, and continually take in the Word as it is preached from the pulpit, and yet the congregation can be lifeless and unproductive.
A congregation that has a large number of its members receiving ministry but not working in ministry is like the Dead Sea.. There are plenty of inlets but no outlets. To be a vibrant and effective church, we must not only “take in” all we can, but also “give out” all we can in service to others.
Eph. 4:7-16 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.’ (What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe. So Christ himself gave the apostles,
the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body
of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and
become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and
craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in
every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and
held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
OUR MANDATE FOR MINISTRY
Few things are more exciting than to see numbers of people willingly give of their time and energy to see
that the church’s ministry continues. But on the other hand, few things are more frustrating than to be burdened with the majority of the work of ministry yourself.
In my first preaching ministry, I did everything: I unlocked the doors to the church before the services. I turned on the lights. I checked the water in the baptistery. I made sure all the pews had hymnals. I typed, printed and folded the bulletins. I preached Sunday morning and Sunday night. I locked up after everybody else left. I taught a Sunday-school class. I taught a Wednesday night Bible study. I led the youth group. I attended any and all class functions. I was an ex-officio member of every committee. Most of the time, I drove the church bus. I took communion around to the shut-ins. I typed, printed, folded, and mailed the church newsletter. I attended the board meetings. And for awhile, I even mowed the church grass.
I was convinced that if I did everything it would be done well and that those things would cause the church to grow. I found out that it didn’t matter how much I did. If the congregation wasn’t participating in the work of the ministry, the church was not going to grow.
The strange thing is that even though I had made a fairly thorough study of the Scriptures, for some reason I had missed this very important teaching in the New Testament. And believe it or not, the congregation was perfectly happy allowing me to do anything I wanted. I could work just as hard and as long as I wanted. In fact, they encouraged me in it and sat on the sidelines and watched. They enjoyed the performance. It took me quite awhile to recognize the scriptural principle that I’m teaching about today.
For too long, the church has been like a football game. A small percentage of the people in the stadium are playing their hearts out and 60,000 people are sitting in the stands cheering or booing. But Scripture teaches us something completely different. One of the keys to advancing the gospel is for the church to be made up of individuals who consider it their task to do the work of the ministry, rather than having a congregation of people who expect a paid person to minister them.
I heard about an elderly man who went to his doctor for a physical. The doctor checked him out thoroughly. He told the elderly fellow that he was basically in good health for his age, but also gave him some guidelines concerning his lifestyle.
A few weeks go by and the doctor is at a restaurant with his wife. The same elderly man comes in with a much younger woman. The doctor can’t believe what he’s seeing but sure enough, the old fellow is there and having a grand old time.
The doctor walks over to the elderly man and his companion and says, “I thought I gave you some guidelines concerning your lifestyle. How does this fit into my instructions?”
The old fellow coughs and then says, “I thought you told me to find a hot mama and be cheerful.” The doctor says, “I must not have checked your hearing well enough. I said, ‘I found a heart murmur. Be careful.”
I don’t want to be misunderstood this morning. Let’s avoid misunderstanding if at all possible. This is not a ploy for me to get someone else to do my work for me. And I’d be untruthful if I told you I’d never tried to get out of work But I’ll be honest and tell you that I take my position seriously and want to do the best job possible
One of my most important tasks is to see that the Scriptures are followed accurately. It’s why I spend so much time studying and taking classes and going to seminars and conferences. I never want to stand in front of you and tell you something that has no biblical merit or basis. According to the New Testament, the purpose of church leadership is not to do all the work of the ministry, but to equip the church to minister to one another.
There was a shift in how things were done when Christ established the church. Under the Old Testament Law, the Jews understood that there were certain things that only the priest could do. Only the priests could offer certain sacrifices and perform certain rituals. And only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies.
But at Jesus’ death the veil of the Temple was torn, symbolizing that all worshippers may now enter into the very presence of God. There is no longer a distinction between priest and people, clergy and laity.
The New Testament teaches that all God’s people are supposed to be ministers; that we are all called to be priests. 1 Pet. 2:5, 9 – “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” In Rev. 1:5-6, it says that Jesus Christ “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom AND priests to serve his God and Father.”
OUR MODEL FOR MINISTRY
Our passage this morning spells out a definite model for ministry within the church. The sad thing is that for hundreds of years, a grammatical error was made in translating part of this passage. The error was a misplaced comma in v.12 of our main passage this morning.
Now how much damage could a comma do? The answer is, a lot. This passage concerns leadership gifts within the church. With the misplaced comma, leadership gifts existed “for the equipping of the saints [comma] for the work of service [comma] to the building up of the body of Christ.”
According to John R.W. Stott, in his commentary The Message of Ephesians, Armitage Robinson
discovered the mistake in 1903. The first comma did not belong. The former translation said that the leadership gifts of the church existed for three separate reasons: Task #1 – To equip the saints. Task #2 – To do the work of ministry. Task #3 – To build up the body of Christ. The way it reads, only the professionals are responsible for accomplishing the growth and maturity of the church
The better translation (the one that meets the guidelines of proper Greek usage and matches the teaching of
the rest of the New Testament) removes the first comma and reads in the NIV: “To prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” Other translations support the idea. The NKJV reads: “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry…” The NASB translates it: “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service…”
The word translated as “prepare” in the NIV and “equip” in other translations is used in other places in Scripture. This word is used in Mt. 4:21 to describe what James and John were doing when Jesus called them to be “fishers of men.” Since they were already commercial fishermen, tt says that they were “preparing their nets.” First century fisherman prepared their nets by cleaning them of any debris (such as sticks and moss), mending any rips and tears, and untangling and folding them so they would be quickly usable. They weren’t preparing them for storage but for service.
In a lot of churches, the preacher and sometimes a handful of volunteers usually do most of the work themselves, and they directly oversee the rest of it. The leaders are often exhausted and near the point of burnout.
That method of operation is based on the wrong model of the church: The congregation sees the church as a PYRAMID – one person at the top, meeting everyone’s needs, and doing all the work. That concept of ministry limits our vision and makes us extremely ineffective. With that particular style of ministry, the pyramid can only grow so large without being to die and the ministry from the top doesn’t reach everybody at the bottom.
The New Testament model of ministry is made up of a CIRCLE in which we all minister to each other. Inside the big circle is a series of smaller concentric circles, each one representing a different ministry. The church grows not by adding people to the bottom of the pyramid but by adding more circles of ministry inside the encompassing circle of the church. Christ is glorified with that style of ministry.
The problem is that if I’m the only person ministering to the needs of the congregation and the community, then I can only minister to a certain number of people. But if the congregation is involved, we can minister to thousands.
If I’m the only minister, you’re going to hear people say, “Mike was good to us when my wife was sick.” Now, I like being good to people. I like being told I was a comfort or help when someone was sick or in trouble. But if the congregation is involved in ministry, you’ll hear the people say, “The church was really
good to us when we went through a rough time.”
Which statement is better? “Mike was really good to us,” or “The church was really good to us”? Since the church is the Body of Christ, then the head of the Body, Jesus Christ, receives the recognition. When the church becomes a circle instead of a pyramid, Christ gets the glory instead of the guy at the top of the pyramid.
MATURITY THROUGH MINISYTRY
There’s a danger as a congregation starts to grow. There is a temptation to hire more staff to do the work of ministry. Now, don’t get wrong, I believe wholeheartedly in hiring talented and well-trained people for certain areas. But this practice runs the risk of reducing the congregation to an audience: Just sit back and watch us work.
This model of ministry fails to produce vitality and health in a congregation If the members of the congregation begin to sense that they are not needed, growth actually gets stifled.
The erroneous assumption is that if we make life as easy as we can on our membership (especially new members), the church will grow because all they have to do is sit and watch. But the opposite is actually true. The simple teaching for us today is that when we follow the scriptural “mandate” for ministry and the scriptural “model” for ministry, the church will grow and continue growing.
Thom Rainer studied hundred of churches and wrote a book called High Expectations. One of the marks of a healthy church was that they successfully assimilated new members – meaning that they did a good job of winning and keeping members. The way this effective assimilation occurred was through expecting more of its members, not less.
Listen to his finding in his own words: “Repeatedly we heard about effective assimilation methodologies that worked only if the ministries carried with them high expectations of those involved. Such is the primary conclusion and thesis of this study. Effective assimilation churches have one primary characteristic that sets them apart from churches that do not keep their members in active involvement. Effective assimilation churches had high expectations of all their members.
Along with overall congregational growth, being involved in ministry helps us to grow in our individual
Christian lives. Nothing helps you grow as a Christian like service. If you want to grow in your walk with Christ, you need to get involved in ministry: visit a nursing home, teach a class of young children, go on a short-term mission trip, or volunteer for a humbling job like helping a shit-in or cleaning up after a church function.
If our church is not providing opportunities for our members to serve, we are stifling our members’ spiritual growth. Staff people should be hired to direct, recruit, train, and empower the members of our congregation
to do the work of ministry. But each of us as members of the body of Christ is responsible to do our own part.
Understand that Scripture teaches that all Christians are given some gift of service so that we can minister to each other and our community. We have to recognize the New Testament teaching concerning spiritual gifts.
In Acts 2, we’re told that when we become Christians, we receive the indwelling presence of God’s Holy Spirit. One of the reasons that we receive the Holy Spirit is that He equips us with at least one gift for
ministry.
You can find the primary New Testament teachings concerning these gifts here in our passage this morning from Eph. 4 and also in Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12, and 1 Pet. 4. I can’t cover this subject this morning or we’d all be here until it was time for evening service. I know you don’t want that. Suffice it to say that it is biblical and you will hear more about this in the fairly near future. Know that these gifts are given to do works of ministry.
Rick Warren put it this way: “God gave me a gift, not for me but for you, and God gave you a gift, not for you but for me. If you don’t use your gift, you’re depriving me; if I don’t use my gift, I’m robbing you.”
CLOSE
Some of you are thinking, “There’s no way God can use me. I’m not good enough. I’m not talented enough. I’m just not ready.”
Please recognize that there are a lot of reasons why God shouldn’t have called you. But He has. You’re in
good company. Moses stuttered. David’s armor didn’t fit. John Mark was rejected by Paul. Timothy had ulcers. Hosea’s wife was a prostitute. Amos’ only training was in the school of fig-tree pruning. Jacob was a liar. David had an affair. Solomon was too rich. Abraham was too old. David was too young. Peter was afraid of dying. Lazarus was dead. John was self-righteous. Naomi was a widow. Paul was a murderer. So was Moses and David. Jonah ran from God. Miriam was a gossip. Gideon and Thomas both doubted. Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal. Elijah was burned out. John the Baptist was a loudmouth. Martha was a worry-wart. Her sister Mary was lazy. Samson had long hair. Noah got drunk. Did I mention that Moses had a short fuse? So did Peter and Paul and a lot of other folks.
But God doesn’t require a job interview. He doesn’t hire and fire like most bosses, because He’s more our Dad than our Boss. He doesn’t look at financial gain or loss. He’s more concerned about the gain or loss of souls and the spiritual maintenance of those souls. He’s not prejudiced or partial, not judging, grudging, sassy, or brassy, not deaf to our cry, not blind to our need.
As much as we try to gain whatever we get, God’s gifts are free. We could do wonderful things for wonderful people and still not be... well, wonderful.
Satan says, “You’re not worthy.” Jesus says, “So what? I AM.” Satan looks back and sees our mistakes. God looks back and sees the cross. The greatest gift God ever gave was the gift of salvation through His Son
